#literally just documenting this for my own sake because sweeney is that tremendous a thing to me personally

[septembersghost]

it’s taken me almost a month to finally listen to the sweeney todd revival recording and it’s so surreal because it’s like…the remnants of why this music is seared into my being don’t quite exist in the way they should on this blog, it’s (frankly dear, forgive me candor) intrinsic more than displayed, but knowing it intimately inside and out, you’d think another cast would be much like previous iterations, except they’re always different experiences because of variations in portrayal and vocal characterization, and the lush orchestrations here filling out their world (my sense memory so used to the stripped down, eerie doyle revival arrangements that alex’s grand ones returning to the tunick originals do change the atmosphere. there’s no conceit here, it’s a beating, bleeding heart).

josh has such a specifically beautiful baritone that it could easily be too romantic for this part, instead he utilizes it like a blade. the chemistry between he and annaleigh has its own energy (some of the michael and patti sinister psychosexual obsession, some of the detachment warring with mania of george and angela, but there’s also a curious rapport to their cunning and their “arrangement” lending them slivers of humanity - these are people who’ve lost everything, you can’t expect them to be rational).

anyway i easily know everyone involved has succeeded when i reach my friends and get goosebumps (see how they glisten…), when green finch feels like my heart is trying to escape my chest (have you decided it’s safer in cages, singing when you’re told?), when johanna makes me teary (i was half-convinced i’d waken, satisfied enough to dream you…the reprise is going to destroy me! another bright red day!), and when epiphany makes me feel extremely sick to my stomach only for “seems a downright shame…” to make me want to cackle with madness. is it really good? sir, it’s too good at least.

this will always be a story, to me, about love in the most visceral, terrifying sense, and its absence and corruption and destruction and tragedy, how depriving and breaking people individually and systemically consumes what would otherwise nourish. love buried in a grave of the past and love unrequited and love at the windowsill dying to escape and love in the basement set on fire. if only angels could prevail, we’d be the way we were. you’re gone and yet you’re mine.

stephen sondheim no one will ever be you miss you and love you forever